Contactless payments

This month, Vancouver became the first Canadian city to commercially roll out open transit payments. But the city of Laval actually got a head start on Vancouver with a pilot project that is getting a positive reaction from riders.

Despite Canada's high penetration of contactless POS terminals and consumer affinity for the technology, the country has lagged behind nations such as the U.K. and Singapore in contactless payments. That is set to change as Canada's transit schemes launch contactless open-payment systems.

Contactless payments have become increasingly popular in the U.K. over the past couple of years due to the advantages they offer in terms of speed and ease of payment — but despite this, much of the U.K. public does not trust the format.

Visa CEO Alfred Kelly is less publicly adversarial toward market rival PayPal than his predecessor Charlie Scharf, even as Visa's push for a "single button" for online payments seems to undermine PayPal's business model.

It's no surprise that London topped the chart of "Cashless Capitals" in a recent study, considering its status as a major fintech hub of the U.K. But this wasn't enough to make it the country's contactless capital.

Microchip implants could be considered the ultimate form of mobile payment — skipping the smartphone altogether in favor of giving people bionic abilities. And a small segment of the population is already lining up to try it out.

Because Google Pay is already accepted at numerous mainstream merchants and is the default mobile wallet for many Android smartphone owners, it stands a strong chance of easing the friction of enrollment in a contactless fare system.

To see significant growth in NFC payments in the U.S. a movement to standardize terminals across merchants would be necessary, coupled with a willingness from consumers to test, trust and use the technology, writes Beatta McInerney, business development manager for payments at ScanSource.